Books We Read: "The Empty Space" by Peter Brook

This new series at In the Classroom will introduce you to some of the best books on theatre. Each entry in the series will explore a book on theatre that's impacted somebody associated with Signature. A staff member, a teacher, maybe even an audience member! If you have a book about theatre or the arts that's changed your perspective on things, comment below and let us know! We'd love to read it and we'd love to hear from you!

Today, we hear from Joan Cummins, Signature's Education & Community Outreach Intern about The Empty Space by acclaimed director Peter Brook. You can purchase The Empty Space here at Amazon. 

How do I feel about The Empty Space?  I love it. Every time I read the book it drives me deep into thinking about theatre. I find myself wondering at Brook's insights, connecting them to instances from my own life, and I come out of the book rejuvenated and ready to spread the importance of theatre, the vibrant life force at the center of the art form, with everyone I meet. I would recommend it to anyone interested in theatre, whatever your relationship with the form. 

Brook divides theatre into four types: the Deadly, the Holy, the Rough, and the Immediate. He begins with the Deadly - theatre, often commercial in nature, that goes through the motions of style or form without truly being full of life. Deadly theatre becomes trapped in the idea that someone, somewhere, has defined how the play should be done. In Brook's words, Deadly theater fails to "start each time afresh from the void, the desert and the true question... Why theater at all? What for?"

Holy Theatre for Brook is theater that serves as a ritual, that helps connect people and the material world with the invisible or something close to the divine. Rough Theatre is popular theater, theatre full of obscene jokes, clowns, and improvised props - perhaps a paper crown thrown on to indicate kingship. Brook prizes the invention of this kind of theater, and that "it is there unashamedly to make joy and laughter... any theater that can truly give delight has earned its place."  The Immediate Theatre, containing elements of both the Holy and the Rough, is the ultimate, cathartic, present and vibrant theater.

I love the way Brook talks about the theatre. His passion for it runs shimmering throughout the entire book. He asks important questions, questions any person with any relationship with the theater can use to deepen their understanding. His questions make you ask questions of yourself. I also love the way he is able to provide a rational argument for why Shakespeare's theatre combines all the best elements of theatre into one place, instead of declaring that Shakespeare is the best because everyone says he is. Brook's book is a jumping-off point for those who want to become seriously familiar with the world of theatre - just looking up the people he mentions in The Empty Space would provide you with a great background in the important thinkers and artists in the medium.

I'll leave you with one last gem from Brook:  "The theater, on the other hand, always asserts itself in the present. This is what can make it more real than the normal stream of consciousness. This is also what can make it so disturbing."

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On Creativity, Intuition and Inspiration

Sophy Burnham. Photo Credit: Mark Regan.

Sophy Burnham, author of the bestselling book A Book of Angels, is a popular author, playwright, journalist, and non-fiction writer. Her works have been produced at Studio Theatre and American University. She has appeared on Larry King Live, Oprah, The Today Show, Good Morning America, and CBS Morning News. This spring, she will teach at The Signature Academy with former Signature playwright-in-residence, Paulette Laufer, Call for Creativity. This popular course, blending and borrowing techniques and skills from both writing and acting, will explore the creative imagination within each student.


Of all the things that stifle creativity, none is so smothering as an abusive Inner Voice—the one that says you aren’t good enough, old enough, young enough, rich enough, poor enough, neurotic enough, happy enough, smart enough, creative enough . . .  Not enough!  The  Voice that whispers in your ear, "You’ll fail; you always fail; so best give up before you’re rejected publicly."

But being creative is part of being human.  We create.  We cannot help it!   We build gardens, cook meals, knit, sew, design, build, fashion and fabricate.  Creativity is engraved in our nature. Inspiration claps its hand on our shoulder.

And intuition is closely allied to both.  Creativity is one facet of intuition—the gut feeling that tells you to go here, not there.  It comes like a bolt from the blue, the sudden inspiration that lifts you out of yourself and into higher states.  It wakes you in the night, mind churning.   It comes also in response to struggle and work, when you are striving to listen to your inner wisdom.  It comes when you invite the muse, your guides and angels, the secret, hidden springs of your highest Self.

What is creativity?  Where does it come from?   Who has it?  How do you get more?  Here is Mozart, writing of inspiration.

“When I am, as it were, completely in myself, entirely alone and of good cheer, say, traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not; nor can I force them. . .  Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is I cannot tell!”

What people don’t tell you is that it can be learned.  Like intuition.  You invite it.  Every artist understands this.

“I slip into a state,” wrote the playwright Neil Simon, “that is apart from reality…I don’t write consciously—it is as if the muse sits on my shoulder.”

But what exactly is inspiring us?  Is it simply our unconscious mind spewing out information lodged in forgotten memories or making connections we hadn’t recognized before?  The verb inspire comes from Latin, meaning “to breathe in.”  Subtly enfolded in its essence is the sense that something is breathing into us, filling us with Life!

Creativity begins in the Right-Hemisphere of the brain, which is also the seat of emotion, of the ability to recognize faces, of psychic power, and mystical epiphanies.  The creative process is different from conscious analytic thought (although critical left-brain thinking is also essential). Creative ideas collide in a dreamlike state, or they rise up like bubbles in that hypnagogic state you occupy just as you are drifting off to sleep.

How do you invite creative inspiration?    I have written of this in my latest book, THE ART OF INTUITION: Cultivating Your Inner Wisdom.  And now I’m teaching at Signature.
Take the journey with me.   Dare to enhance your own powers of creativity!
I’d love to see you join us.

~Sophy Burnham


For more about creativity, be sure to enroll in CALL FOR CREATIVITY, a four-week course taught by three extraordinary women:  playwright Paulette Laufer and bestselling author Sophy Burnham. New to this course is a two or four-week option, allowing students to create their own course toward creativity.  Registration closes February 27th! Sign up today!

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